The industry utilizes a wide variety of software products from a wide variety of sources, designed for a wide variety of environments. In some cases, software applications assist in organizing these products in order to provide consistency among users. As an example, a company may wish to restrict the number and version of applications the end users are using in the company in order to more efficiently manage their IT resources. Program products are needed that provide the service of managing software applications including distributing appropriate versions and updates. FIGS. 8 and 9 depict a high level view of the download process of prior art systems. A list of servers is presented to a user who selects one for downloading a package of digital data 901. If the download is not successful 902, the user can select another server if available. One such product (ISSI) is described as follows:
The IBM Standard Software Installer (ISSI) is a product used to provide a wide variety of program applications within an enterprise to distributed users FIG. 8. The product is described as it might be used within the IBM corporation for example. The product could also be used in any other entity with modifications that would be obvious to one skilled in the art. This electronic software distribution solution does not require that a software distribution product be installed on the clients. This solution is the initial step towards a comprehensive Web-based electronic software distribution solution. The next step, includes a dynamic package catalog and the integration of the TME10 SD for FW as the software distribution engine. This will allow management of the desktop via the other integrated Tivoli applications.
The architectures and, in many aspects, the actual implementation employed in this solution largely follow the Operating System Platforms (OSP) software distribution architectures and implementations that are currently exploited for the Client for e-business WINDOWS 95 available from MICROSOFT CORP., WINDOWS NT 4 available from MICROSOFT CORP., and OS/2 available from INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORP. (IBM) offerings.
ISSI Solution Highlights:
                A. Easy to use interface for the end-user        B. Automated installations                    1. Response file driven installations; Minimized end user intervention; configuration consistency; reduced end-user install support (doc, education); reduced end-user induced errors.                            a. Products with native support for response files                b. OSP's MagicWin installation technology for products that do not support response files natively                                    2. Pre-prompting for installation variables; a subset of the total variables required for the package install, predetermined values for others; end-user selects options and install proceeds without further intervention                        A. OSP Packaging Architecture Based Packages                    1. Delivery tool independent; Reusable for all OSP solutions (TME10 SD for AIX (AIX available from IBM is IBM's version of UNIX), TME10 SD for Framework, Static and Dynamic Web, CD source installs).                        C. Consistent technology and package install behavior across all Client for e-business deliverables.                    1. Leveraged service delivery center skill            2. Leveraged end-user education/expectations                        D. Infrastructure                    1. Established package distribution process            2. Leverage of existing service delivery center infrastructure            3. TCP/IP based offering            4. Multiple servers, selected based on topological closeness to client            5. After the “One-time client setup” is run, all support code and configuration files that reside on the client are automatically kept current from the server                            a. Server targets definitions                b. Installer programs                c. Userids/Passwords for server access(FIG. 1) Illustrative Web Shopping Server TopologyWeb “Master” Server                                                
The Master URL (http://w3.ibm.com/download/standardsoftware) is hosted by the corporate Web support organization (maintainers of the w3.ibm.com URL). This will provide a single logical server presence and take advantage of the redundancy and load balancing that is provided to all w3.ibm.com hosted web pages. The Master web server will be established by OSP and the GGS project office.
ISSI Pages
The ISSI pages follow the IBM Intranet page standards ensuring a consistent look and feel with other pages hosted on the IBM intranet (w3.ibm.com). Key page destinations within the ISSI “site” are directly accessible from every ISSI page via navigational tabs (NavTab) on the page mastheads for planning for and deploying the ISSI Web based shopping solution.
The hierarchy of the ISSI shopping pages is:
I. Home/Overview
                A. FAQ (available from every page via NavTab)        B. User's Guide (available from every page NavTab)        C. Client Setup        D. Geography Page        E. Operating System Catalog (available from every page NavTab within Geography)                    1. Package Links            2. Package Information Page            3. Package Prompt and Install Page                        